Ship descriptionThe federal dropship, according to the game is a well armed ship designed for spec ops insertions and extractions. With the 1 C3 Hardpoint and the 4 C2 hardpoints, this ship, if used well is a tough nut to crack, however, like any ship in the game, it has got its chinks in its armour. First off, well armed does not mean well armoured. Right off the bat, you can forget shields as the vessel does not like shields whatsoever. Every time, I kit this ship out with shields, they feel brittle, against small ships, this is a good thing, the shields wont falter to smallship fire, but anything bigger than a C3 will tear a massive hole through it.

Things the ship can be used forDue to the huge amount of internal compartments, it is quite a versatile ship:-Piracy-Mining-Bounty Hunting-Smuggling

Piracy

When it comes to piracy, armour does not really matter, you simply need precise weapons, some basic armour, space for hatch breakers limpets, collector limpets and last but not least, space for the good stuff. Weaponry wise, you'll want a plasma accelerator to bring their shields down quickly, and a set of burst lasers or pulse lasers for the rest, and definitely on gimbals. This is so that you can bring down subsytems, like power, PDC's, chaff and other countermeasures. Beam lasers can cause too much collateral damage, so if you're hunting down a type 6 (this ship has weaker armour and can easily be "accidentally shot down"), you want minimal damage. You will also want high rated thrusters to catch up with quicker ships. You may also want high rated engines to follow them should they make a run.

For mining, you'll want to use one of the class 3's for a good refinery bin, the other for prospector limpets, and the class 2 for collector limpets. Hardpoint wise, you're going to want to pack as many countermeasures as possible onto your ship, 2 of your hardpoints (the mediums) should have mining lasers, all the rest should be turreted, this is because you wont want to confront the pirate who happens to encounter you, you want to run. This calls for high rated thrusters. All the rest of your internal compartments should be cargo space.

For bounty hunting, speed is key, damage is key and support is key. Since the ship is not manoeuvrable at all, you will either want lots of turreted weapons, or a couple of smaller ships to stave off other small ships which are supporting the one you are hunting. As said above, damage is key, but so is precision: You will want to knock out your opponents power supply. Speed is key? Again that calls for high rated thrusters. When it comes defences, you will want all countermeasures you can get, but leave space for a kill warrant scanner. For weapons specifically: C3 plasma acc, 4 C2 turreted pulsers or, if supported by smaller ships: C3 plasma acc, 4 beam lasers, gimballed.

smuggling

When it comes to short ranged smuggling, you need balance the cargo space with a comfortable amount of armour, but you dont want to be too heavy as that'll drag down your ships speed, which brings me onto speed: The faster, the better. You will also want a good FSD so that you can do much longer distance jumps. Weaponry-wise, you are going to want general damage, you'll want to be able to scare any hunters/pirates off by simply brute forcing their ship. For that kind of damage, you may want weapons like Cannons, Beam cannons, Plasma accelerators, Frag cannons, what should be rather obvious here is that almost none of these are precision weapons. This is because we want to tear a big enough whole through their ship to put their tail between their legs.

Last edited by Nabari on Thu Jul 20, 2017 3:33 pm, edited 2 times in total.